Rodent control in the past few years has become more and more complex as the toxicity of the active ingredients of various rodenticide products became more lethal to man and domestic animals.
The use of these highly potent substances require the user to exercise more care in the placement of the poisoned substances in order to avoid harming or even possible killing non target species.
Development of "tamper-resistant" containers to isolate these toxins has been one of the most sig1nificant developments of new laws that have been rigidly enforced.
More recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established a set of standards for the adequate isolation of baits in areas that they may come into contact with children, pets, and wildlife.
These standards have resulted in the need for devices that more effectively contain the poisoned baits under circumstances that have never before been quantified to such an extent.
In the past few years patents have been granted to numerous device to contain and isolate poisoned bait and these are reflected in U.S. patents in Class 43/131 such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,349,981 9/1982 Sherman--4,031,653 6/1977 Jordan--4,161,079 7/1979 Hill--4,400,904 8/1983 Baker--4,541,198 9/1985 Sherman--Foreign Pat. Nos. 6617388 5/1968 Netherlands and 2111022 9/1972 Federal Republic of Germany, U.S. Pat. No. 4,648,201 3/1987 Sherman.
While the aforementioned patents advanced the state of the art, they were defective in that they did not take into consideration the possible use of probing object that could be shaped, and thereby could be inserted with some degree of ease into a container, that by its very function, needed to contain a method of entry and egress for the target species to be eliminated.
Although some designs incorporated baffle type internal structures, these baffles were placed some distance from the bait and were designed to deflect or channel probes away from the direction of the bait compartments.
The baffles were not designed to cooperate with a specific type or size of bait and they proved to be defective because common objects could be "shaped" into probes that would allow pieces of the poisoned bait to be chipped away and thereby possibly poison the very subjects that they were designed to isolate the bait from.
This is especially true of the Sherman U.S. Pat. No. 4,648,201 dated Mar. 10, 1987 which was designed to eliminate the possibility of a rigid probe being inserted into the unit and being deflected by the opposing tunnel walls.
The object of the instant invention is to overcome these deficiencies by providing a bait containment device that isolates the bait not only from probing with a rigid or short object, but also provides a higher degree of protection from the possible insertion of common objects that could be bent into easily defined shapes that could be used to attack the poisoned substances contained in the bait station.
Still another object of the invention is to improve on those units constructed with baffles that direct a rigid probe away from the bait compartment but do not provide proximity protection to the poisoned bait at the point of most probable contact.
And yet another feature of the instant invention is to provide this protection to the poisoned bait while allowing access to the bait by the target species that the bait station has been designed to eliminate.
These and other novel feature of the invention are disclosed in the drawings and in the written description contained herein, and the teachings will disclose a safe and effective method for presenting rodent baits in areas that might be accessible to children, pets and wildlife in a manner that protects the bait from coming into contact with non target species.